Full Disclosure
by wikiaddicted723
Summary: My take on the fallout of Peter's revelation in "Os" once Olivia recovers her body from Bell's possession. Quite possibly AU, but let's hope they get a little bit of happiness before the baby BOOM. R&R please!


There's a knock on the door.

She's not been in the house for more than an hour, and she's already poured herself at least three generous shots of some old, dusty Bourbon bottle stacked on the back of a cupboard. She knows she'll need to think about all that's happened sooner or later, face the fact that she's been possessed by a scientist they'd thought long dead, force herself to dwell on the fact that she's found the killer she'd been after only months ago embodied in the man she'd crossed universes for. The words " be careful what you wish for" come to her mind bitterly, but as long as there's alcohol in the house, she thinks; she can afford to shut her mind off.

She cradles her head in her hands, running them through her pulled up hair with a sigh that sounds a lot more like a sob than she would have liked, it is on moments like this that she hates her alcohol tolerance, because no matter how many shots, how many bottles she downs she knows she cannot stop the thoughts of _him_ from flooding her mind, running around in her head, making endless spiraling patterns that always seem to end on the same place. And then there's a knock on the door.

She already knows who it will be, standing there on the other side of her door, wonders if by some weird occurrence –she no longer believes in impossible –her thoughts are the reason that have brought him here at this ungodly hour of the night, and she doubts her ability to face him without breaking yet again, without both punching the lights out of him and crushing him to her until she no longer has the strength to let him go. So she stands, brushes her hair back and tries to regroup her thoughts, tries to give herself some semblance of the tenuous control that seems to elude her just now, and opens the door.

He stands there, in front of her, his hands in his coat pockets as his breath goes up in a cloud of smoke into the cold night air. His blue gaze pierces her then, looks right through her in a way only he has ever been able to do, and she knows that he's the one man that she will never be able to keep out, as much as she'd like to. She stands aside without a word, letting him into her apartment and closing the door behind him, she never looks at him as she sits down again, across from him, and pours another shot of the fiery amber liquid on her tumbler, her mouth has gone dry all of a sudden. His hand stops the glass's path to her waiting lips, and a small spark of electricity shoots through her, making her look up into his waiting eyes and she finds herself frozen. He takes the glass away from her and sets it on the table between them, still holding her now limp hand in his, rubbing more of his burrowing circles into her palm, and she wants to laugh because she finds that his very touch comforts her when she's sure her logical response should be repulsion. There's nothing logic can do for her anymore.

"How are you?" he asks, his voice soft and his eyes piercing, holding her gaze as she feels her emotions getting out of control, so she does what she does best, she gets a hold on them, tightly reins them in, close to her chest and transforms then into something she's familiar with, something she knows everything about. Something safe. It becomes anger, white – hot and blazing like a furnace, and yet as cold as liquid nitrogen to the touch, rigid in the tight control she exerts over herself. She somehow manages to choke out a bitter laugh at his words.

"I'm alive." She says, her voice inflectionless, her eyes shouting words to him that she knows she wouldn't be able to say herself, and she wishes with everything in her that she could stop feeling for him the way she does, that she could stand back and see him in the comfort of blacks and whites instead of the hazy shroud of grays in between that he's always been to her.

He's not a bad man. That much she knows just by looking into his eyes, by the fact that he's actually _told_ her, the Federal Agent, what he's done; and yet he's lied to her, conned her in ways she never would have imagined, and it shreds her to pieces to think that these might not be the only things he's held from her, that maybe he's been lying all along. She hears his disheartened sigh and watches as he hangs his head in shame, recognizing her emotions; her thoughts, before _she_ can even sort them out. It's how they've always worked, but this eerie communication irks her just now, so she looks away from him, misses the way he looks at her longingly, apologetically, he's not prepared to lose her, he never has been, and it breaks what's left of him to think that she might have reached her breaking point, but if he's ever been anything he's not a man that gives up easily.

He stands and comes to sit on the table between them, their closeness forcing him to wedge a leg between her knees almost forcefully, the motion catching her eye, dragging her stare back to him.

"Don't do this, Olivia…please." He pleads with her, leaning forward into her space, making her sit back fully into the couch, avoiding as much contact as she can because she can already feel her anger ebbing away just as suddenly as it came. She realizes she's too tired to be angry, tired of the games, tired of the lies, tired of carrying worlds on her shoulders; she doesn't want to have this conversation.

"Why should I listen to _you_?" she says back, holding on to whatever righteous anger she has left, even if said anger is directed at herself, because there's nothing she's ever wanted more than to be with him, and she fears that this time she might just lose herself if she doesn't have him to hold onto when the storm finally hits her, and she hates being so weak, hates needing him so much. She has never _needed_ anyone before Peter Bishop crashed into her life; sure she's wanted to share her life with someone else, has wanted to feel like she's not alone, a half of a whole, but not even with John did she feel this burning _need_ to be close to someone, to commune in a way that leaves no room to say where one ends and the other begins, to feel the sort of togetherness that he can make bubble up within her just by looking at her a certain way, to bask in the warmth that spreads through her when his eyes soften as he gazes at her, their corners crinkling with that small, secretive smile he's so fond of; she hates him for the fact that even if she knows she can live _just fine_ without him she no longer wants to, and she hates him for making her love him so much that being close to him here, now, hurts her in ways she didn't know she could be hurt.

"Maybe you shouldn't…." he says, as softly as before, "But you _will_, because that's just who you are." He brushes his fingertips across her cheek, his touch no more than a breath of air against her skin and yet it manages to ignite every nerve ending in her. She doesn't know how she finds the strength to keep from leaning into his hand, but she can't make herself move away from it either. He continues speaking before she has the chance to interrupt him again.

"I don't regret what I did." he says, his voice sober, serious, " I lived on my own for far longer than I can remember, trying as hard as I could to not care for anyone but myself, because I found out pretty early that caring can kill you. I don't want to die, Olivia…" he drifts off, looking down, somehow ashamed, "but I can no longer pretend that I don't care what happens with the world…with both of them. I need to believe there's a way for the both of them to survive, because there's as many innocent lives Over There as there are Here," he locks gazes with her then, as if seeking her understanding, "I need to know why that infernal machine responds specifically to _me. _You have no idea what it's like to know that you could be responsible for the deaths of billions of people, of women, of children, of wives and husbands and sons that never did anything wrong besides being born on the unlucky side of the universe. You have no idea what it feels like to know that someday I could kill _you_." He looks away, disgusted with himself, but the flash of pain is visible to her, and she's surprised, and perhaps a little ashamed that she did not consider how bad he must feel about it all.

"Why would you kill _me_?" she asks and he laughs in self – deprecation.

"I'm not from here, Olivia," he says, and she knows that he knows it is a fact that always manages to sit on her thoughts like an elephant in the room, she can only ignore it so long and only sometimes, "my very energy is not from here…what if that's what triggers it? What if my birthplace defines the machine's target? A simple elimination process, killing anything that has different properties…I could be destroying _this _universe as much as the other one…I don't want to be responsible for your death, or Walter's, or Astrid's…I don't want to lose you." He pauses, tasting ashes on his tongue by the very thought of being without her now that he's had her, and she realizes how little she's thought of his position in all of this, how very real his concerns. She doesn't want to lose him either, she wants to say, but the words seem reluctant to come out of her mouth, and he speaks again before she can bring herself to say them.

"I don't regret what I did, because I'll do whatever I have to, to understand this mess, to put a stop to this damned war before it destroys everything I care about…but I need you to know that I _do_ regret having to lie to you, deceiving you isn't something I relish."

"Then why did you?" she asks, more hurt and anger seeping into her voice, because even if she now knows what he's going through, it doesn't lessen the feeling of betrayal at being lied to.

"Because we weren't exactly on good terms at the time, Olivia, and I didn't want to add more weight to the wagon."

"But you didn't have to lie, dammit! You have no idea what I'm feeling right now, to know that you lied to my face." She blurts out before she can think of what she's just said. He laughs bitterly, throwing his head back and brushing his face with his hands, sitting back to look her in the eye.

"Don't be a hypocrite 'Livia, it doesn't suit you." He says sarcastically, every bit the pain in the ass Peter she remembers from Iraq. She wants to bite her tongue then, smack her head against the wall for saying something so stupid, thinking the shots might actually be having an effect on her. She'd lied to him about his very existence, she has no right to reproach him his secrets; she realizes that he might be better off than her in this, because at least he had the decency of telling her before she found out herself, not at all how she'd handled things.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, looking at him, searching his eyes, and she knows that he understands that she's hurt and she sees the warmth, the readiness to wait for her in his eyes, and she loves him all the more for it, even if she's not ready to let him know that little detail just yet, so when she feels his hand cup her cheek and his lips brush hers as softly as the caress of a feather, she lets herself lean into him and respond in kind, pouring all of her into the kiss with an urgency and a heat that surprises both of them and leaves him eager and craving for more.

They never make it to her bedroom.


End file.
